explain, for Drake was neither an Oxford graduate nor a scholar. His University was the sea.
That he was a Devonian, we know, but not much else is known. The years 1539, 1540, 1541, and 1545 all claim his birth, and the historians are at conflict as to whether his father was a parson or not. Some say that, having, owing to religious persecution, to flee to Kent, the elder Drake inhabited a hulk (like Rudder Grange), and, in the intervals of reading prayers to the sailors in the Medway, brought up his twelve sons to the sea. But that matters little; what matters is that one of his sons became a master mariner, a buccaneer, a circumnavigator, a knight, an admiral, and in 1588 destroyed (under God) the Spanish Armada. This successful and intrepid commander was a man "of small size, with reddish beard," who treated his companions with affection, as they him with respect, and got the last drop of energy and devotion out of all. He had "every possible luxury, even to perfume," but remained hard as nails. His death came to pass off Porto Rico, whither he had been sent by Queen Elizabeth to bring back another haul of treasure from the West Indies. Hitherto he had succeeded, returning always with more spoil, but this time he succumbed to various disorders.
The waves became his winding sheet, the waters were his tomb;
But for his fame the ocean sea is not sufficient room.
Even in the six-and-thirty years that Drake has stood, in bronze, on the Hoe, he has seen wonderful changes; but had his statue been there ever since his death—as it should have been—what amazing naval developments would have passed beneath his eyes: wood to iron, canvas to paddle-wheel, paddle-wheel to screw, coal to oil, and then the submarine!
Turning from the Hoe with the intention of descending to the town by one of the paths through the lawns at the back of the great sailor's statue, what should confront me but the most perfect bowling-green I have ever seen, with little sets of phlegmatic Devonians absorbed in their contests. Here, thought I, is, beyond praise, devotion to tradition. Of national games we have all heard, but there is something, in a way, even finer in a municipal game—and such a municipal game, the most famous of all. For years I have never heard Plymouth Hoe mentioned without thinking of Drake and the game of bowls in which he was playing, and which he refused to interrupt, when, that July afternoon, in 1588, news came that the Spaniards were off the Lizard. ("Plenty of time," he said, "to finish the game and beat the Spaniards too.") But it had never occurred to me that bowls and the Hoe were still associated. England has commonly a shorter memory than that. And, indeed, why should they be associated? There is, for example, no archery at Tell's Chapel on the shore of the Lake of Lucerne, no wood-chopping at Mount Vernon. But Devon, with excellent piety, remembers and honours its own prophet; and I now understand how it is that the Plymouth Museum should be destitute of relics of Drake. Why trouble about his personal trappings when this pleasant sward is in existence, to connect the eye instantly with the mighty admiral at one of the most engaging moments of his life?
I stood by the railings of the green for two hours watching the latter-day Plymouth champions at their play. Only the descent of the sun and the encroaching gloom drove me away, and even then a few enthusiasts remained bowling and bowling; for every one who is devoted to bowls knows that the twilight favours form, although it does not favour the spectators. The players seemed to me to be chiefly of the mercantile class, and I wondered if among them were any of the bearers of the odd names which I had noticed above the Plymouth shops as I was drifting about its streets that morning. Were any of the great Devon tribe of Yeo there? Was Mr. Condy U'Ren winning or losing? What kind of a "wood" did Mr. Odam project towards the "jack"? Could the admirable elderly player who always lifted his right foot and held it poised in the air while delivering the bowl be Mr. Jethro Ham? I judged the players to be, in many cases, old antagonists, and these games on this sunny October afternoon merely items in a series of battles spread over years past, and to continue, I hope, for years to come; for the pastime of bowls, unlike cricket and baseball and lawn tennis, has a kindly, welcoming smile for old age. The late Sir William Osler's rule as to forty being the culmination of man's power becomes an absurdity on the green. There, seventy is nothing. At eighty you are not necessarily to be sneezed at. Even nonagenarians, I believe, have earned the thrill contained in the phrase "Good wood!" So then I confidently expect, if I am alive, and am on Plymouth Hoe in twenty years' time, when prosperity will again be established, with amity among the nations, to find many of the same players at this at once the gentlest, but not the least exciting, of games—to me, at any rate, more exciting than horse-racing with all its speed.
They played exceedingly well, these men of Plymouth, one veteran in particular exacting a deadly amount of work out of the last four feet of the bowls' stealthy journey. And how serious they were—with their india-rubber over-shoes, and a mat to start from! I doubt if Sir Francis had it all so spick-and-span—for in his day we were very nearly as far from lawn mowers as from turbines. And how intent they were on the progress not only of their own bowls but of their opponents' too—but of course with a more personal, more intimate, interest in their own, even to following its curve with their back-bones, and to some extent spinally reproducing it, as conscientious players involuntarily do.
ADMIRALS ALL—TO BE
It is fitting that the naval training college from which the English midshipmen go straight to sea should be situated in Drake's county. This means that they breathe the right air, and, through the gap made by the rocky mouth of the Dart, look out from their commanding eminence upon a triangle of the right blue water. Drake also gives his noble name to one of the Terms (or companies of cadets).
I have seen Dartmouth both at work and at play, and am still not sure which was which. Whether the boys were at football on those high table-lands where, at the first glimpse—so many players are there—all the games seem one; or cleaning boilers; or solving the problems of knots; or winding accumulators; or learning to steer; or drawing machinery sections; or poring over charts; or assembling an engine; or sailing their cutters in the Dart; or listening to signal instructors in the gun-rooms; or acquiring the principles of navigation; or collecting the constituents of a variegated tea in the canteen; or singing "God Save the King" in chapel (all three verses); or grappling with logarithms; or swimming vociferously in the bath—whatever they are doing, there seems to be at the back of it the same spirit and zeal. Even the four or five offenders whom I saw expiating in punishment drill their most recent misdeeds appeared to have a zest.
Literature and the Navy have always had their liaison; and after studying two or three typical numbers of The Britannia Magazine, the organ of the cadets, I see every chance of a new crop of Captain Marryats and Basil Hoods; while there is promise of an excellent caricaturist or so, too. Compared with the ordinary run of school periodicals, this is rather striking. I fancy that I discern a fresher and more independent outlook and a rather wider range of interest. The natural history articles, for example, are unusually good, and some of the experiences of war, by midshipmen, are vivid and well done; and amid the fun and nonsense, of which there is a plentiful infusion, there is often a sagacious irony. Among this fun I find, in prose, an account of the Battle of St. Vincent, by a young disciple of George Ade, which would not disgrace a seriously comic periodical and must be quoted. Nelson, I should premise, has just defeated the Spaniards. Then—
"Say, stranger," asked H. N., as the dons mushed around with their surrenders, "is this a business proposition or a sad-faced competition at a dime show?"
"Gee-whizz!" said the Spanish Ad., "we reckon we're bored some. My name is Muckheap, and I don't seem to get gay any old way."
"Bully for you, old Corpse-face," Nels replied; "hand out your ham-carvers and then run around and fix yourself an eye-wizzler!"
And so they passed in real swift.
And did the British Fleet push in
